New! Wir haben eine spezielle Website über Schweizer Bankkonten mit mehreren hundert Seiten an Informationen zusammengestellt. Micheloud & Cie, eine bekannte Schweizer Firma, ist der Inhaber beider Websites. Klicken Sie hier, um zu www.swiss-bank-accounts.com zu gelangen.

In 1934, the Swiss Federal Parliament explicitly introduced the notion of bank secrecy for the first time in a section of the law and created criminal sanctions. Why was this law created? The first and most common explanation is the one taken up by the Swiss Bankers Association, which considers the event to be a political act by the Federal Parliament to demonstrate its independence and its neutrality in the face of the threatening power of Nazi Germany.

In the wake of the 1931 financial crisis, the Weimar Republic introduced strict foreign exchange controls. Many cases of economic espionage led by the German tax and customs authorities were exposed in Switzerland, while the Swiss laws were not sufficient to fight effectively against such practices. In reality, while the German agents risked deportation, at the very most, the German clients who fell victim to violation of bank secrecy were harassed by the Nazi government and forced to empty their Swiss accounts to the profit of the Third Reich.

In early 1933, the Swiss government felt it necessary to incorporate criminal provisions in the legislative enactment it was working on. In that way, the justice system would have more dissuasive weapons to guard against foreign infiltration. The will grew even stronger when Hitler came to power in 1933, with his threatening attitude regarding his political opponents and the Jewish population. In June 1933, the German Nazi government created a series of laws that obliged German citizens to declare all foreign holdings. The penalty prescribed for failing to do so was death: Any German national who, intentionally or unintentionally, led by lowly selfishness or some other type of vile sentiment, has accumulated wealth or kept funds abroad will be punished by death. In July 1933, a law was passed on the confiscation of goods belonging to public or State enemies, so allowing the Nazis to seize all of the German Jews' assets.

The Gestapo was in charge of despoiling operations abroad. One of the procedures they used to determine whether a German had an account in a Swiss bank was the following: an SS agent in civilian dress would walk into a Swiss bank and give the teller a sum of money to deposit into the account of Mr. X, who the Gestapo believed had an account in Switzerland. If the banker agreed to make the deposit, there was proof that an account existed. In some cases, the mere look of discomfort on the teller's face was grounds enough for the secret agent. Then all the Gestapo in Germany had to do was exert major pressure on the presumed bank client to give instructions for the Swiss bank to repatriate the funds. (Note that with numbered accounts, neither tellers nor bank employees know the identity of the account holders, who are thus protected against this type of indiscretion.)

When three Germans were put to death in 1934 for having an account in Switzerland, the Swiss authorities were convinced of the necessity for a strict law on bank secrecy to protect Swiss bank clients by the criminal code. With the threat of imprisonment for any banker who violated bank secrecy, the Swiss government imposed a blocking mechanism against its fascist neighbors' laws of extraterritorial pretense. This protected the clients and the Swiss bankers, since no authority could henceforth constrain them by law to commit a crime.

The tenacious Nazis nevertheless continued to conduct banking espionage on Swiss territory. The most resounding case was in March 1935, with the kidnapping of Berthold Jacob, a German Jewish refugee. Mr. Jacob was kidnapped in Basle by a German agent and taken to Germany. Swiss public opinion was outraged by such violation of Swiss sovereignty. The government finally managed to get Berthold Jacob released, but this event made the Swiss people and authorities acutely aware of the necessity for a law on espionage. A section was added to the criminal code in 1937 and served as an effective complement to the provisions on bank secrecy.

Andere interessante Seiten:

Federal Banking Act of 1934 History of Swiss bank secrecy: intensified due to pressure from the French Left The king's Swiss bankers Swiss bank secrecy before 1934